Widening the Scope - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 332

immediacy and directness of a live performance, or the common perception that individual
personalities are involved, nor does it have any glamour or sexiness that i lm or live arts have.
Animation can have an image problem, and the process of animation, while having some
mystery, is often as interesting as watching paint dry. Documentaries about animation struggle
to i nd a more interesting way to say 'so you move it a bit at a time. I'm not sure whether a
programme about giving the public the chance to work on an animated i lm would serve as
great television, as the emotions involved would be low key or negligible, the dramas likely to
be less dynamic than an actress having a monumental attack of nerves or a dancer breaking
a leg, and the clash of personalities somewhat internalised. All the same, I would like to make
a passionate programme where animation is used to inspire, to excite, to transform. Not a
programme that was about a workshop, but a large scale-national event, involving all manner
of arts groups coming together, speaking directly to the public and making some change for
the good. Basically, making animation exciting.
Extreme puppets
I love the fact that there is an irony-free Dolls' Hospital in New York, run by Irving Chais, and
his pride in restoring his patients is enormous. It's clearly not about just repairing mechanical
things. Likewise, a sign outside the Mackinnon Saunders workshops reads 'Mackinnon and
Saunders Hospital, and its witty acronym of MASH seems perfectly apt.
At the other extreme from our puppets are the life-size, astonishingly realistic puppets, well
dolls, sold not just for sexual purposes, but for company. This is taking the already far-fetched
idea of Coppelia to its darkest conclusion. A recent documentary from Channel Five, called Guys
and Dolls , showed with surprising tenderness, the extent that such dolls played in some men's
lives, and not exclusively men. These dolls are created using special ef ects technology to be
fully poseable, articulate and, yes, animatable. The skeletons inside are bigger versions of our
animated puppets, and the silicone is much the same, and can be custom-made to whatever
measurement, colour and age. The sexual side plays a big part in the life of these dolls, and
one man quoted in the documentary genuinely worried that he might get his friend pregnant.
I'm not qualii ed to analyse the psychology here, but the extent of the assimilation of these
puppets into people's lives is comprehensible. These dolls have identities, share holidays and
are photographed in everyday domestic situations as if proving a full life, or a relationship,
where there is none. Talk of ownership was disconcerting, as was the idea of the owner being
jealous of the workers repairing a doll, but then I'm twitchy if someone touches a puppet of
mine. Another man wanted to be buried alongside his companion, raising confusing issues.
If this doll is alive in the man's eyes, must he then somehow kill her, or let her die? A further
comment seems to explain the whole business of animation very succinctly. The man clearly
didn't want to come home to i nd his 'partner' staring into space or collapsed in an ungainly
way on the l oor, so he made sure they were neatly posed as if 'their attention
was directed. That's pretty much what I tell new animators. It's essential to make
sure that a puppet appears to be thinking about something, that their 'attention'
is directed. I try to ensure that an animator poses puppets for publicity stills,
otherwise a puppet staring into space, however beautifully lit and shot, is a dead
puppet, and a dead puppet is a doll. I wonder whether that is the distinction
between the two. Are puppets designed for a life or a performance, and dolls just